A Restful (?) Sabbath

Here's what I did today after church...


I made bread. I had some bran flakes that needed to be used up soon so I added them into the normal ground flax bread recipe I use. Tell me that isn't beautiful dough!


While the bread was rising I planted my seedlings. Instead of buying the tray the peat pots should be put in (which wouldn't fit on my kitchen windowsill) I saved oreo and other cookie trays thinking they'd do the job nicely. And hey what do you know? I was right. This is an oreo cookie tray, it fit 15 peat pots.


Oh yeah, while I was doing all of this Greg and Jonas watched football. A little father-son time. Adorable.


Here are the seedlings all done. And here is a list of what I started: Brandywine tomato, beefsteak tomato, silvery fir tree tomato, red pear tomato, yellow pear tomato, jelly bean tomato, different basils, and sunberry bushes. What is a sunberry you ask? Well I'll tell you. A sunberry is an heirloom which is the cross between an african berry and a european berry. It is compared to a blueberry but supposedly surpasses it in flavor. It should do well in our climate, which is good since I've desperately wanted to grow blueberries but always kill them. I started fifteen of the little suckers. Some are slated to be given away to friends and anyone willing to trade produce or eggs. If the bushes do well enough this year and are perennial I would like to replace our ornamental berry bushes in the front yard with them and probably fill the bank also. Goodness knows something needs to go on that bank!


Here is the bread all done. It rose a lot better than I expected it to. I'm glad the bran didn't weigh it down too much. I've never had luck with getting whole wheat bread to rise properly and I'm so happy the bran didn't succumb to a similar fate. Now to see if Greg will eat it...willingly.

Here's the recipe:

dissolve two teaspoons of yeast in 1/4 cup warm water. add two tablespoons sugar, one teaspoon yeast, two tablespoons canola oil. Heat two cups of milk to about 110 degrees. Pour that in. Add 1 cup ground flax meal and 1 cup bran flakes, mix it in well. Add all purpose flour until it forms a ball that leaves the sides of the mixer. Don't add too much. Like four, maybe four and a half cups. Knead it a bit and rise til doubled. Shape into loaves and rise in greased loaf pans until doubled. Bake at 375 degrees for 40-ish minutes. It's done when it sounds hollow when tapped and has a nice golden brown color. Remove from pans and lay the loaves on their sides so that the tops don't depress while they're cooling. Switch the sides every so often. This makes two loaves.

That was my day. My sister and her boyfriend also came over for dinner and I served them a spinach pasta pesto concoction. I would have made the nastutium pesto if it was just Greg, Jonas and I. But alas it was not. The pesto was from last year's garden. I'm surprised we still have so much left, I was worried we would have run out a long time ago. Now it looks like our supply should last until the new plants start producing. Maybe I should scale back the basil pesto production I have planned for this year. Nah.